The two-hour pilot to Kurt Sutter’s new FX series The Bastard Executioner is, among other things, a prime example of the difficulty inherent in making a good pilot. All pilots tempt their writers toward exposition, and the bigger the story the writer wants to tell, the greater the temptation. Few can resist, and Sutter is not a man known for strict discipline in any sense. He’s got a big story to tell, and if he needs to use opening titles and tons of exposition to get this thing started, so be it. Sure, the gears of the story may grind a little, but that’s alright, we’ll just lubricate them with blood. Speaking of which, bring up a few more buckets, we’re gonna need ’em.

The Bastard Executioner takes place in 14th century Wales, a setting that is probably overdue for a dramatic rendering, given the turmoil that characterized that place and period. In the late 13th century, Edward I found time in his busy schedule of hammering the Scots to put the hammer to the Welsh as well; in fact, his son, Edward II, was born in one of a series of Welsh castles that the king had built by way of facilitating any future hammering that might prove necessary. Spare a moment to marvel at Edward I, one of those figures history periodically tosses up who are bestowed with almost preternatural energy, ability, and murderousness.  We shall not look on his like again, and it might be just as goddamn well.

When The Bastard Executioner’s story begins, Edward I has died, and Edward II (the first ever Prince of Wales, incidentally) has the throne, presiding over English nobles who vigorously and brutally attempt to put down various outbreaks of Welsh resistance. Our hero, Wilkin Brattle (Lee Jones), was at one time a knight in the service of Edward I, until he was nearly killed in a battle with the Scots, after which he retired to Wales to farm, marry and impregnate his loving wife Petra (Elen Rhys), and have nightmares about the battle and an ensuing fever-dream vision of an angel telling him to lay down his sword and lead the life of another man. Indeed.

It transpires that he and the men of his village don’t think much of the way they’re taxed by their local lord, Baron Ventris (played by Brían F. O’Byrne, who was terrific in the late, lamented Showtime series Brotherhood); we later discover that it was this same Ventris who sent Brattle into the trap in Scotland, aided by his crony and now Chamberlain Milus Corbett (played by Stephen Moyer with the glower and smirk that served him so well in True Blood).

The recalcitrant Welshmen (is there any other kind?) ambush the taxman, killing his armed escort and sending him back alive by way of warning. This proves to have been unwise when he’s able to identify one of them, and Baron Ventris takes a party of men to slaughter Brattle’s village down to the last child. This they do, although when Petra flees the village, the baron’s man who catches her shows mercy, robbing her of her cross pendant but otherwise leaving her unharmed. For a moment it appears we may be spared the girl in the refrigerator, but such is not to be: a mysterious figure wielding an ornate knife dispatches her fetus-first in a moment that is a bit much even by Sutter’s standards.

Brattle and his band return to find their village in flames and the bodies of their loved ones displayed for effect in a scene so gruesome that my only note from its initial minutes is “Jesus Christ, Sutter.” The whole sequence plays out a little like an overexcited dude in a bar would describe it; wild-eyed, spit flying “- our guys come back, there’s blood EVERYWHERE, whole place is in flames, bodies stacked up, Petra’s body is HERE, her unborn child is over HERE, it’s fucking TERRIBLE. Our dude, like, cries over his wife for a sec, and then BOOM, he’s up, he’s digging up his sword, and it’s fucking CLOBBERING TIME.”

Clobbering time it is. Brattle’s band of furious Welshmen (which includes an African actually named Berber the Moor) bait the evil Ventris into a trap and, with the help of a larger band of Welsh rebels, slaughter them all. Sons of Anarchy fans will be pleased to learn that Sutter has not abandoned his fascination with dudes getting stabbed in the head.

Wounded in the battle, Brattle is healed by a Slavic witch named Annora (Katey Sagal), who takes the opportunity to brand his face with a cross so he can pass for a similarly-scarred journeyman torturer killed in the melee by a child (yes). To be honest, there’s no terribly convincing explanation for why he has to impersonate the torturer in particular, but Annora cows Brattle into accepting it by telling him she shares his visions/fever-dreams and quoting the angel’s message to him word for word.

Thus disguised and freaked out, Brattle turns up with a compatriot at Ventris’s castle bearing the baron’s body and the corpses of their own slain companions. They claim that all the rebels were massacred, that’s right, every last man jack of ’em, and there’s no point going looking for any of them, no sir-ee, cuz they’re all dead, don’t ye know, and we’ll just be, uh, going now…

Chamberlain Corbett, now effectively in charge though nominally subordinate to Baroness Lowry Ventris (Flora Spencer-Longhurst), foxes their plan by forcing Brattle to stay on as his in-house torturer (an admirable commitment, it must be said, to vertical integration). It’s not entirely clear if Corbett recognizes Brattle as the man he tried to have killed in Scotland years before, but his whisper to Brattle that “our buried truths bind us” suggests he might; it could also have been a simple reference to the fact that both men have things to hide.

They’re not the only ones; we’re treated to a scene in which the healer/witch Annora consorts with her companion, a badly-burned mute (played by Sutter himself). In their (cave?) dwelling is the dagger used to kill Petra.

The episode ends with Brattle dithering over chopping off the head of Corbett’s idiot brother, condemned to death for having been a crude plot device and exposition machine, until he sees his wife’s cross pendant on a soldier’s neck and finds the strength to pursue his vengeance, one sword stroke at a time.

**

Overstuffed? AND HOW. We didn’t even get into the set-up of the Baroness Ventris’s character, a political conflict between Ventris/Corbett and another local baron, or the fact that the original torturer had a family whom he so brutally mistreated that they vouch for Brattle’s disguise presumably because a strange, blood-soaked impostor is clearly preferable to the genuine article.

It would be easy to condemn the pilot as a suffocating business full of exploitative violence and clunky writing. When Petra responds to Brattle’s warning that if they don’t ambush the taxman, the Baron will seize all their money and stock, by screaming “the only stock I can’t live without is you!”, we’re venturing well into abject melodrama, and when the Baroness warns the chamberlain that “we both know there’s nothing more dangerous than a Welshman who has nothing left to lose”, the whole affair threatens to descend into farce.

But the pilot’s mechanics are good; it’s well-staged, with solid production values (not always a given for historical dramas), and there are some excellent performances. Byrne will be missed; he has great presence, and in the battle scene there’s a moment when Brattle’s aged father-in-law challenges the baron and Byrne gives him a look of such irritated disbelief (“you? seriously?”) that I could barely contain my delight. Moyer isn’t called on to do anything other than be sinister, and while he’ll need to be sooner or later, for the moment he’s more than up to the job. The rest weren’t given enough to do, really, to gauge their abilities, though we know from SOA that Sagal can act (she’s still clearly getting used to that accent, however).

And here’s what we’re left with: a broken-hearted and angry warrior impersonating a torturer in a castle run by an enemy in a land beset by questions of identity in which power all but lies in the streets. There have been worse premises, and Sutter, to his credit, got us there in the end.

Shortly before his arrest, Corbett’s fool little brother cries out, “this is lunacy!” Yes, yes it is. But it could turn out to be some decent lunacy now that Sutter has set up his story.

Quick notes:

*They’re setting up a nice identity crisis for the Welsh-born Baroness Ventris, who is now part of a ruling class that brutalizes her own people (if she sees them that way).

*The English/Welsh point isn’t the only critical issue of identity. There’s class, of course, and also faith – various forms of paganism lurk at the edges of this story (and centrally with Annora), while the leader of the rebel band who help Brattle checks to make sure that Berber the Moor is a Christian (we’re told he is, but that may have been an expedient falsehood).

*Fans of Sons of Anarchy, True Detective Season 2 (I know there are a few of you out there), and good actors will be pleased to see Timothy V. Murphy as Father Ruskin, Castle Ventris’s priest. If nothing else, Bastard Executioner is a fine make-work project for Irish and Welsh actors.

*Housekeeping: as (we devoutly hope) this was the longest episode of Bastard Executioner, so this was the longest review. Future ones will be shorter, and I’ll try to get them in on Thursdays. The show airs on Tuesdays.